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Station gets new cargo ship; shuttle inspections underwayBY WILLIAM HARWOODSTORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSIONPosted: July 29, 2009

Space station commander Gennady Padalka aborted the automated approach of an unmanned Russian Progress supply ship today after a problem of some sort left it in the wrong orientation, taking over manual control and remotely guiding the craft to a picture-perfect docking at 7:12 a.m. EDT.

A television camera on the Progress views the space station docking port. Credit: NASA TV

It was familiar territory for Padalka, one of Russia's most experienced cosmonauts. During his approach to the station in the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft last March, the automated KURS rendezvous system malfunctioned and Padalka had to take over manual control to complete the final stages of his own docking.

Today's rendezvous appeared normal up until the point the Progress should have started its final approach.

"Gennady, it looks like the fly around is over but we're in the completely wrong configuration," Russian flight control radioed. "You need to dock manually. Transition into the TORU mode."

Once he took over, he reported the Progress responded normally and television views from the cargo ship showed a rock-solid final approach to the aft docking port.

"Hey Mike, first and foremost, a big congratulations to you guys on a tremendous docking," Hal Getzelman radioed from mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It was beautiful.

"Yeah, Gennady is top of the line for manual modes," space station flight engineer Michael Barratt replied. "We were all in there watching, he did a great job."

Launched July 24, the Progress 34P spacecraft is loaded with 1,830 pounds of propellant for space station maneuvers, 110 pounds of oxygen, 463 pounds of water and 2,718 pounds of maintenance hardware, spare parts and research equipment.

Flying about 370 miles ahead of the station in a slightly lower orbit, the shuttle Endeavour's crew spent the morning examining the ship's reinforced carbon carbon nose cap and wing leading edge panels in a now-standard post-undocking inspection to look for any signs of impact damage that might have occurred since a similar inspection the day after launch.

Using a laser scanner and cameras on the end of a 50-foot-long boom attached to the shuttle's robot arm, the astronauts began inspecting the ship's the right wing around 6:30 a.m. Once complete, they planned to turn their attention to the nose cap and finally, the left wing.

"We go back to what we did on flight day two, which was the inspection of the wing leading edge using the big boom," commander Mark Polansky said in a NASA interview. "We do pretty much the exact same thing on this day to make sure that we haven't had any damage while we're on orbit from micrometeorites."

The nose cap and wing leading edge panels experience the most extreme heating during re-entry and even minor defects can be serious. Until the inspection is complete and the data analyzed by engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Endeavour will remain close enough to the space station to re-rendezvous if necessary.

Two small satellites are scheduled to be launched Thursday - one to test GPS navigation techniques and the other to study the atmosphere - and the astronauts will break out their re-entry pressure suits and the recumbent seat Wakata will use to ease his return to gravity after four months in space.